


self care is kissing your avatar of confusion

by NedandChuck



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, Kissing, Reunions, Set in S4, melanie is the only person in the archives rn practicing any self care, mentions of melanies therapy sessions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-02 07:17:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20272078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NedandChuck/pseuds/NedandChuck
Summary: helen and melanie also deserve to reunite and be in love





	self care is kissing your avatar of confusion

Helen…

Helen isn’t used to being so disturbed by her own confusion.

Of course, the entire point of her being at this point is that she embodies confusion itself. That’s fun, there is nothing wrong with the power and responsibility she has over twisted situations.

But this is different. This time, something churns deep in her stomach as she watches Melanie stop short in front of one of her doors, hesitate, and then spin on her heel and walk away. That’s never happened before, and it _hurts_ somehow.

It has been weeks since she last heard from the woman she had truly thought was her friend, and she’s beginning to feel sympathy for the Archivist at this point. In an effort to stave off her loneliness she’s been messing with the rest of the staff – popping up doors all over the place whenever she can find Blackwood, appearing out of nowhere to clack her long nails and smile her wide smile at Basira, who already looks ready to collapse from frustration and exhaustion. Daisy’s vision probably swims and swirls from her own lack of sleep as well, and besides that isn’t much fun to mess with now that she’s _friendly_, and the Archivist has become much less frightened of her in the past year, so he’s a bit of a bore.

She’ll still appear at his door (or rather, her own in the opposite corner of his little office) every once in a while, and the two of them will gripe about losing very important people, despite those people being in the same building as they are.

It’s embarrassing, but the Archivist does honestly understand her situation, and sometimes ignoring his problems while waiting for her turn to complain right back is really helpful in getting the weight off of her chest and the storm out of her stomach. She doesn’t _understand_ why the loss is affecting her so much, or when Melanie got so damned important to her.

Very shortly after she’s finished fueling the nightmares of some poor sod halfway across the country (from the Institute, not from her corridors, which defy any concept of space or time) she is startled out of these thoughts by a quick, sharp knock on her door.

It’s a _familiar_ knock.

There is next to no way that the person making the sound is actually Melanie, it’s a trick her god is plenty capable of playing and has several times in the past, though never this cruelly. Honestly, she shouldn’t even check the other side, but something else is moving her feet towards the door, and she sends a silent whisper (is it technically a prayer) to the entity of confusion. A bitter, warning whisper of how awful it is to play this prank on such a loyal follower.

The door creaks open, and Helen immediately sends out a retraction and apology to her Entity.

“Melanie?” Helen swallows down the crack in her voice and tries to steady it, “What are you doing here?”

“I came to, ah,” Melanie looks nervous and tired, but she also looks _good._ Not even only in the sense that she has always looked good to Helen, in the way that her hair will fall just so and make Helen’s breath stop. Or the time when she had to replace some lightbulb in the Archives and Helen’s heart stopped when Melanie’s shirt lifted up over her stomach, revealing her scarred, muscled midsection. No, she looks happier somehow, less angry and exhausted with life itself, and more at ease and comfortable. She doesn’t have that fire of destruction in her eyes, it’s morphed to something like determination. Helen is shaken out of her study of this new Melanie when she speaks again, “I came to apologize? For ghosting you.”

A little laugh escapes her at the wording, but Helen just shakes her head and shrugs, “I don’t know- I mean, I didn’t really expect you to-“  
“I’ve been, um, seeing someone?” Melanie has never looked this nervous in her life, which makes Helen feel so selfish for the way that her heart has just dropped out of her chest. The look on her face must be obvious, because Melanie immediately holds up both of her hands and shakes her head, “Oh! No, not like that! I’ve gotten a therapist, I mean. I was distancing myself from everyone in these Archives because I thought that would help me feel more normal, less like the person who turned into a monster with an appetite for blood. But doing that made me distance myself from you, as well. We,” she cuts herself off with a fond little laugh, “I brought you up, last week, and we talked about you for such a long- Anyways, we talked and came to the conclusion that maybe I didn’t have to walk away from everyone here in order to get over my trauma. And maybe putting distance between you and I was… It wasn’t making me happy.”

Helen could say something very easily in the empty space that is left when Melanie stops to take a breath. She could and she would, if she knew what she was supposed to say. It seems like Melanie is waiting for something though.

“I don’t understand.”

That does not appear to be what Melanie was waiting for.

“What I’m saying,” Melanie speaks slowly, not impatient, but almost frustrated in something else. “I want to continue to be around you, if that’s alright with you. I miss you quite a lot, and wanted to apologize and see if you are still willing to put up with me.”

Little noises that make up stops and starts of the beginnings of sentences that Helen does not know the endings of make their way out of her mouth before she finally settles on, “Why?”

It makes Melanie laugh, which feels like a gift, which is something so incredible to hear after so long of not being allowed to hear her voice and a lifetime of not being allowed to hear it make such a free and purely happy noise. She opens her mouth as if to respond, then presses her lips together as if she doesn’t know how.

And then,

So slowly,

She reaches her hands up and cradles Helen’s face. She gives her every possible opportunity to pull away or panic. She pushes herself up on her toes, when she sees no sign of either.

She pressed their lips together and Helen can suddenly understand her trouble being able to put this into words rather than actions. Helen chases her lips when Melanie starts to pull away, making an eager giggle and leaning up again to meet her in the middle.

“I’m sorry,” and she’s not talking about the kiss.

“It’s alright,” and to prove that she knows what she meant, Helen kisses her again and continues, “I missed you, too.”


End file.
